The best of Ruskin Bond

Even the temple priest, attended by his son and grandsons, complains bitterly of the cold. To spend every day barefoot on those flagstones must indeed be hardship. I wince after five minutes of it, made worse by stepping into a puddle of icy water. I shall never make a good pilgrim; no rewards for me, in this world or the next. But the priest’s feet are literally thick-skinned; and the children seem oblivious to the cold. Still, in October they must be happy to descend to Maku, their home village on the slopes below Dugalbeta. It begins to rain as we leave the temple. We pass herds of sheep huddled in a ruined dharamshala. The crows are still rushing about the grey weeping skies, although the hawk has very sensibly gone away. A runda sticks his nose out from his hole, probably to take a look at the weather. There is a clap of thunder and he disappears, like the White Rabbit in ‘Alice in Wonderland’. We are halfway down the Tungnath ‘ladder ’ when it begins to rain quite heavily. And now we pass our first genuine pilgrims, a group of intrepid Bengalis who are heading straight into the storm. They are without umbrellas or raincoats, but they are not to be deterred. Oaks and rhododendrons flash past as we dash down the steep, winding path. Another shortcut and Ganesh Saili takes a tumble, but is cushioned by moss and buttercups. My wristwatch strikes a rock and the glass is shattered. No matter. Time here is of little or no significance. Away with time! Is this, I wonder, the ‘bounding and exalting cheerfulness’ experienced by Batten and now manifesting in me? The tea-shop beckons. How would one manage in the hills without these wayside tea-shops? Miniature inns, they provide food, shelter and even lodging to dozens at a time. We sit on a bench between a Gujjar herdsman and a pilgrim who is too feverish to make the climb to the temple. He accepts my offer of an aspirin to go with his tea. We tackle some buns—rock-hard, to match our environment—and wash the pellets with hot sweet tea. There is a small shrine here, too, right in front of the tea-shop. It is a slab of rock roughly shaped like a lingam and it is daubed with vermilion and strewn with offerings of wild flowers. The mica in the rock gives it a beautiful sheen. I suppose Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals, and birds all play their part, both in mythology and in everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in those remote places where gods and mountains coexist. Tungnath, as yet unspoilt by materialistic society, exerts its magic on all who come there with open mind and heart.



On The Road To Badrinath If you have travelled up the Mandakini valley, and then cross over into the valley of the Alaknanda, you are immediately struck by the contrast. The Mandakini is gentler, richer in vegetation, almost pastoral in places; the Alaknanda is awesome, precipitous, threatening—and seemingly inhospitable to those who must live, and earn a livelihood, in its confines. Even as we left Chamoli and began the steady, winding climb to Badrinath, the nature of the terrain underwent a dramatic change. No longer did green fields slope gently down to the riverbed. Here they clung precariously to rocky slopes and ledges that grew steeper and narrower, while the river below, impatient to reach its confluence with the Bhagirathi at Deoprayag, thundered along the narrow gorge. Badrinath is one of the four dhams, or four most holy places in India. (The other three are Rameshwaram, Dwarka and Jagannath Puri.) For the pilgrim travelling to this holiest of holies, the journey is exciting, possibly even uplifting; but for those who live permanently on these crags and ridges, life is harsh, a struggle from one day to the next. No wonder so many young men from Garhwal find their way into the Army. Little grows on these rocky promontories; and what does, is at the mercy of the weather. For most of the year the fields lie fallow. Rivers, unfortunately, run downhill and not uphill. The harshness of this life, typical of much of Garhwal, was brought home to me at Pipalkoti, where we stopped for the night. Pilgrims stop here by the coach load, for the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam’s rest-house is fairly capacious, and small hotels and dharamshalas abound. Just off the busy road is a tiny hospital, and here, late in the evening, we came across a woman keeping vigil over the dead body of her husband. The body had been laid out on a bench in the courtyard. A few feet away the road was crowded with pilgrims in festival mood; no one glanced over the low wall to notice this tragic scene. The woman came from a village near Helong. Earlier that day, finding her consumptive husband in a critical condition she had decided to bring him to the nearest town for treatment. As he was frail and emaciated, she was able to carry him on her back for several miles, until she reached the motor road. Then, at some

expense, she engaged a passing taxi and brought him to Pipalkoti. But he was already dead when she reached the small hospital. There was no morgue; so she sat beside the body in the courtyard, waiting for dawn and the arrival of others from the village. A few men arrived next morning and we saw them wending their way down to the cremation ground. We did not see the woman again. Her children were hungry and she had to hurry home to look after them. Pipalkoti is hot (and pipal trees are conspicuous by their absence), but Joshimath, the winter resort of the Badrinath temple establishment, is about 6,000 feet above sea level and has an equable climate. It is now a fairly large town, and although the surrounding hills are rather bare, it does have one great tree that has survived the ravages of time. This is an ancient mulberry, known as the Kalpa Vriksha (Immortal Wishing Tree), beneath which the great Sankaracharya meditated, a few centuries ago. It is reputedly over two thousand years old, and is certainly larger than my modest four-roomed flat in Mussoorie. Sixty pilgrims holding hands might just about encircle its trunk. I have seen some big trees, but this is certainly the oldest and broadest of them. I am glad the Sankaracharya meditated beneath it and thus ensured its preservation. Otherwise it might well have gone the way-of other great trees and forests that once flourished in this area. A small boy reminds me that it is a Wishing Tree, so I make my wish. I wish that other trees might prosper like this one. ‘Have you made a wish?’ I ask the boy. ‘I wish that you will give me one rupee,’ he says. His wish comes true with immediate effect. Mine lies in the uncertain future. But he has given me a lesson in wishing. Joshimath has to be a fairly large place, because most of Badrinath arrives here in November, when the shrine is snowbound for six months. Army and PWD structures also dot the landscape. This is no carefree hill resort, but it has all the amenities for making a short stay quite pleasant and interesting. Perched on the steep mountainside above the junction of the Alaknanda and Dhauli rivers, it is now vastly different from what it was when Frank Smythe visited it fifty years ago and described it as ‘an ugly little place . . . straggling unbeautifully over the hillside. Primitive little shops line the main street, which is roughly paved in places and in others has been deeply channelled by the monsoon rains. The pilgrims spend the night in single-storeyed rest-houses, not unlike the hovels provided for the kentish

hop-pickers of former days, some of which are situated in narrow passages running off the main street and are filthy and evil-smelling.’ Those were Joshimath’s former days. It is a different place today, with small hotels, modern shops, a cinema; and its growth and comparative modernity date from the early Sixties, when the old pilgrim footpath gave way to the motor road which takes the traveller all the way to Badrinath. No longer does the weary, footsore pilgrim sink gratefully down in the shade of the Kalpa-Vriksha. He alights from his bus or luxury coach and drinks a Cola or a Thums-up at one of the many small restaurants on the roadside. Contrast this comfortable journey with the pilgrimage fifty years ago. Frank Smythe again: ‘So they venture on their pilgrimage . . . Some borne magnificently by coolies, some toiling along in rags, some almost crawling, preyed on by disease and distorted by dreadful deformities . . . Europeans who have read and travelled cannot conceive what goes on in the minds of these simple folk, many of them from the agricultural parts of India, wonderment and fear must be the prime ingredients. So the pilgrimage becomes an adventure. Unknown dangers threaten the broad well- made path, at any moment the gods, who hold the rocks in leash, may unloose their wrath upon the hapless passerby. To the European it is a walk to Badrinath, to the Hindu pilgrim it is far, far more.’ Above Vishnuprayag, Smythe left the Alaknanda and entered the Bhyundar valley, a botanist’s paradise, which he called the Valley of Flowers. He fell in love with the lush meadows of this high valley, and made it known to the world. It continues to attract the botanist and trekker. Primulas of subtle shades, wild geraniums, saxifrages clinging to the rocks, yellow and red potentillas, snow-white anemones, delphiniums, violets, wild roses, all these and many more flourish there, capturing the mind and heart of the flower-lover. ‘Impossible to take a step without crushing a flower.’ This may not be true any more, for many footsteps have trodden the Bhyundar in recent years. There are other areas in Garhwal where the hills are rich in flora—the Harki-doon, Harsil, Tungnath, and the Khiraun valley where the balsam grows to a height of eight feet— but the Bhyunder has both a variety and a concentration of wild flowers, especially towards the end of the monsoon. It would be no exaggeration to call it one of the most beautiful valleys in the world.

The Bhyundar is a digression for lovers of mountain scenery; but the pilgrim keeps his eyes fixed on the ultimate goal—Badrinath, where the gods dwelt and where salvation is to be found. There are still a few who do it the hard way—mostly those who have taken sanyas and renounced the world. Here is one hardy soul doing penance. He stretches himself out on the ground, draws himself up to a standing position, then flattens himself out again. In this manner he will proceed from Badrinath to Rishikesh, oblivious of the sun and rain, the dust from passing buses, the sharp gravel of the footpath. Others are not so hardy. One saffron robed scholar, speaking fair English, asks us for a lift to Badrinath, and we find a space for him. He rewards us with a long and involved commentary on the Vedas, which lasts through the remainder of the journey. His special field of study, he informs us, is the part played by Aeronautics in Vedic literature. ‘And what,’ I ask him, ‘is the connection between the two?’ He looks at me pityingly. ‘It is what I am trying to find out,’ he replies. The road drops to Pandukeshwar and rises again, and all the time I am scanning the horizon for the forests of the Badrinath region I had read about many years ago in Fraser ’s Himalaya Mountains! Walnuts growing up to 9,000 feet, deodars and ‘Bilka’ up to 9,500 feet, and ‘Amesh’ and ‘Kiusu’ fir up a similar height—but, apart from strands of long leaved excelsia pine, I do not see much, certainly no deodars. What has happened to them, I wonder. An endless variety of trees delighted us all the way from Dugalbeta to Mandal, a well-protected area but here on the high ridges above the Alaknanda, little seems to grow; or, if ever they did, have long since been bespoiled or swept away. Finally we reach the wind-swept, barren valley which harbours Badrinath—a growing township, thriving, lively, but somewhat dwarfed by the snow capped peaks that tower above it. As at Joshimath, there is no dearth of hostelries and dharamshalas. Even so, every hotel or rest-house is filled to overflowing. It is the height of the pilgrim season, and pilgrims, tourists and mendicants of every description throng the river-front. Just as Kedar is the most sacred of the Shiva temples in the Himalayas, so Badrinath is the supreme place of worship for the Vaishnav sects. According to legend, when Sankaracharya in his digvijaya travels visited the Mana valley he arrived at the Narada-Kund and found fifty different images lying in

its waters. These he rescued, and when he had done so, a voice from Heaven said, ‘These are the images for the Kaliyug, establish them here.’ Sankaracharya accordingly placed them beneath a mighty tree which grew there and whose shade extended from Badrinath to Nandprayag, a distance of over eighty miles. Close to it was the hermitage of Nar-Narayana (or Arjuna and Krishna), and in course of time temples were built in honour of these and other manifestations of Vishnu. It was here that Vishnu appeared to his followers in person, as the four-armed, crested and adorned with pearls and garlands. The faithful, it is said, can still see him on the peak of Nilkantha, on the great Kumbha day. It is, in fact, the Nilkantha peak that dominates this crater-like valley where a few hardy thistles and nettles manage to survive. Like cacti in the desert, the pricklier forms of life seem best equipped to live in a hostile environment. Nilkantha means blue-necked, an allusion to the god Shiva’s swallowing of a poison meant to destroy the world. The poison remained in his throat, which was rendered blue thereafter. It is a majestic and awe-inspiring peak, soaring to a height of 21,640 feet. As its summit is only five miles from Badrinath, it is justly held in reverence. From its ice-clad pinnacle three great ridges sweep down, of which the southern one terminates in the Alaknanda valley. On the evening of our arrival we could not see the peak, as it was hidden in clouds. Badrinath itself was shrouded in mist. But we made our way to the temple, a gaily decorated building about fifty feet high, with a gilded roof. The image of Vishnu, carved in black stone, stands in the centre of the sanctum, opposite the door, in a Dhyana posture. An endless stream of people passes through the temple to pay homage and emerge the better for their proximity to the divine. From the temple, flights of steps lead down to the rushing river and to the hot springs which emerge just above it. Another road leads through a long but tidy bazaar where pilgrims may buy mementos of their visit—from sacred amulets to pictures of the gods in vibrant technicolour. Here at last I am free to indulge my passion for cheap rings, with none to laugh at my foible. There are all kinds, from rings designed like a coiled serpent (my favourite) to twisted bands of copper and iron and others containing the pictures of gods, gurus and godmen. They do not cost more than two or three rupees each, and so I am able to fill my pockets. I never wear these rings. I simply hoard them away. My friends are convinced that in a previous existence I was a jackdaw, seizing upon and hiding away any kind of bright and shiny object: So be it. . . .

Even those who have renounced the world appear to be cheerful—like the young woman from Gujarat who had taken sanyas and who met me on the steps below the temple. She gave me a dazzling smile and passed me an exercise book. She had taken a vow of silence; but being, I think, of an extrovert nature, she seemed eager to remain in close communication with the rest of humanity, and did so by means of written questions and answers. Hence the exercise book. Although, at Badrinath, I missed the sound of birds and the presence of trees, it was good to be part of the happy throng at its colourful little temple, and to see the sacred river close to its source. And early next morning I was rewarded with the liveliest experience of all. Opening the window of my room, and glancing out, I saw the rising sun touch the snow clad summit of Nilkantha. At first the snows were pink; then they turned to orange and gold. All sleep vanished as I gazed up in wonder at that magnificent pinnacle in the sky. And had Lord Vishnu appeared just then on the summit, I would not have been in the least surprised.



Flowers On The Ganga Flowers floating down the river: yellow and scarlet cannas, roses, jasmine, hibiscus. They are placed in boats made of broad leaves, then consigned to the waters with a prayer. The strong current carries them swiftly downstream, and they bob about on the water for fifty, sometimes a hundred yards, before being submerged in the river. Do the prayers sink too, or do they reach the hearts of the many gods who have favoured Hardwar—‘Door of Hari, or Vishnu’—these several hundred years? The river issues through a gorge in the mountains with a low booming sound. It does not break its banks until it levels out over the flat plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It is fast and muddy; but this does not deter thousands from descending the steps of the bathing-ghats, and plunging into the cold, snowfed waters. For the Ganga washes away all sin. Says the Mahabharata: ‘To repeat her name brings purity, to see her secures prosperity, to bathe in or drink her waters saves seven generations of our race . . . There is no place of pilgrimage like the Ganga, no god like Vishnu . . .’ Almost every child knows the story of how the Ganga descended from heaven. For 1,000 years King Sagara’s great grandson stood with his hands upraised, praying for water to enable him to make the funeral oblations for the ashes of his 60,000 grand-uncles. Almost all the gods were involved in the affair. Finally, when the waters of the Ganga were released from heaven and the river reached the earth, the prince mounted his chariot and drove towards the spot where the ashes of his kinsmen lay. Wherever he went, the Ganga meekly followed. Gods, nymphs, demons, giants, sages, and great snakes, all joined in the procession, and as the river followed in the footsteps of the prince, the whole multitude of created beings bathed in her sacred waters and washed away their sins. * The multitude that followed the prince could be the same multitude that throngs the riverfront today. I see no one who is not delighted at the prospect of entering the water. ‘Ganga-Mai-Ki-Jai!’ The cry goes up mostly from the older people who have come here, many for the last time, to make their peace with the gods. Only their ashes will make the trip again.

It is a big crowd, although this is just an ordinary day of the week and not an occasion of special religious significance. Every day is a good day for bathing in the Ganga. But at the time of major festivals, such as Baisakhi, elaborate arrangements have to be made, including special trains and police reinforcements, to take care of the great influx of pilgrims. The number of pilgrims at the Baisakhi festival usually exceeds 100,000. During the Kumbh Mela, held every twelve years, there may be as many as 500,000 present on the great bathing-day. This is ten times the normal population of Hardwar. And when one realizes that the town is bounded by the steep Siwalik hills on one side and the river on the other, and has one main street leading to the riverfront, it is not surprising that in the past large numbers of people were crushed to death in stampedes at the narrow entrance to the ghats. Fortunately the main street is a broad and pleasant thoroughfare. Although Hardwar is ancient (the Chinese traveller, Hiuen Tsang, records a visit made in the Seventh Century), little remains of earlier settlements. There are only two or three old temples. But the present buildings—tall, balconised structures put up in the Twenties and Thirties of this century—have a certain old-world charm. Even new houses follow the same pattern. This isn’t conscious planning; it is simply that Hardwar is a conservative town and clings to its traditions. Most of the buildings along the road are dharamsalas. The road is shaded by tall old peepul and banyan trees. In some places the trees reach right across the street to touch the roofs of the three-storey buildings on the other side. At several places I find small peepul saplings growing out of the walls of buildings. One young peepul has sprung up in the fork of an adult kadam tree and will probably throttle it in time. No one fells the sacred peepul. It is better that walls should crumble or kadam trees wither. At least this guarantees the survival of one species of tree in a world where forests are rapidly disappearing. To fell a peepul is to invite trouble; for the tree is the abode of spirits, and the man who cuts so much as a branch is likely to be pursued by all the spirits he had disturbed. * Peepuls live for hundreds of years, and Hardwar ’s oldest trees must have been here before the present town reached maturity. Some will be as old as the eleventh- century Maya-devi temple, which is probably the oldest temple in Hardwar. On a sultry day there can be no pleasanter spot than the shade of a peepul tree; the leaves

are perpetually in motion, even when there is no breeze, and spin around in currents of their own making. It is no wonder that the man who plants a peepul is blessed by generations of Hindus to come. While I stand beneath one of these giant trees, a devout and elderly man approaches with a watering-can, and, circling the tree, waters the soil around the base of the trunk. I move out of the way of his sprinkler watching the ritual in some surprise. It has been raining steadily for some days, and the tree should have no need of water. ‘Why are you watering it?’ I ask. ‘Why does one water anything?’ asks the old man. ‘So that it may grow and flourish, of course.’ ‘But it’s been raining almost every day.’ ‘Rain is something else,’ he says. ‘I am not responsible for the rain, this is water from the Ganga, and I have fetched it myself. That makes a lot of difference.’ I cannot argue. He waters the tree with love; and his love for the tree, as much as rain-water or river-water, is what makes it flourish. Leaving the main street, I enter the bazaar. The Hardwar bazaar is a long, narrow, winding street, probably the oldest part of the town, and free of all vehicular traffic. The road is no more than four yards wide. The small shops are spilling over with sweets, pickles, bead-necklaces, sacred texts, ritual designs, festival images, and pictures of the gods in vibrant technicolour. There is something in these naive, gaudy prints that acts as a transformer, making the more abstract Hindu philosophies comprehensible to anxious farmer or acquisitive taxi-driver. The bazaar winds and turns back upon itself, and eventually I find myself back at the riverfront, gazing out across the river at the forested foothills. Few of the pilgrims on the bathing-steps can realize that sometimes at night a tiger stands on the opposite bank watching the bright illuminations of the temples, or that elephants listen to the rumbling of the trains bringing pilgrims to Hardwar from all parts of India. It is evening now, and there are fewer people at the ghats. Most of the bathers are family people—farmers and small shopkeepers with their women and children and aged parents. One does not see many students, or young people in Western clothes. Hardwar is old-fashioned, and so are most of the people who come here. *

Charity, too, is old-fashioned, and Hardwar thrives on charity: donations to the temples and alms to the beggars, mendicants and itinerant ash-smeared sadhus. The beggars do not follow one about, as in the larger cities. They are confident of receiving coins from the pilgrims who pass by on the steps to the river. They simply sit there, occasionally calling out, but preferring to listen to the music of small coins dropping into brass begging-bowls. Close by are the money changers, squatting before baskets which are brimming over with small change. In the rest of the country there is a shortage of small coins, and shopkeepers often decline to provide change; but in Hardwar you can change any number of notes for small coins. You are going to leave all the coins here anyway, when you distribute it along the river-front. As the pilgrims leave the ghats, the joy of having accomplished their mission bursts forth in songs of praise: ‘Henceforth no more pain, no more sickness; all will be well in future; Ganga-mai-ki-jai.’ More flowers are being sold; and now the leaf-boats are lit by ‘diyas.’ The little boats are swept away, sometimes travelling a considerable distance before being upset by submerged rocks or inquisitive fish. I, too, send an offering down-stream, but my boat sails beneath the legs of a late bather, and disappears beneath the pilgrim. My boat is lost; but my rose-petals still float on the Ganga. It has been said that if the Ganga ran dry, all life in India would cease. There is no likelihood of that happening. The Ganga is overgenerous as the annual floods will testify. So long as the Himalayas stand, this river will flow to the sea, and millions will come to immerse their bodies, their sins and their prayers in its sacred waters.



Mathura’s Hallowed Haunts Mathura, most sacred of cities, stands on the right bank of the Yamuna northwest of Agra. All men speak of Mathura with reverence, and it has been said that ‘if a man spend in Banaras all his lifetime, he has earned less merit than if he passes but a single day in the sacred city of Mathura.’ It is difficult to pierce the fog which hides the date of the city’s birth; but sacred it has always been, as the capital of the kingdom of Braj and the birthplace of Lord Krishna: ‘Teacher and Soul of the Universe. Destroyer of the earth’s tyrant kings, and the First of the Spirits . . .’ I went to Mathura at the end of the rains. The fields and the trees were alive with strange, beautiful birds: the long-tailed king-crow; innumerable doves in shades of blue and green; kingfishers and bluejays and weaver-birds; and, resting on a telegraph pole, the great whiteheaded kite, which, some say, was Garuda, Vishnu’s famous steed. Resplendent, too, were the green and gold parrots, from among whom Kamadeva, the god of love, chose his steed. Armed with his sugar cane bow with its string made of bees, Kamadeva still rides at night over the plains of Mathura. Many are the journeys he makes on nights approaching the full moon. He knows the ways of men and women, and his bow, like Cupid’s, is always ready to assist the ardent lover. In the tanks and ‘jheels’ around Mathura I saw a variety of game birds—wild duck, herbits, cranes and snipe—but all life is sacred for many miles around Mathura, and not even the bird trapper is permitted to lay his snares. Strutting under an old tamarind tree are Krishna’s birds, the brilliant peacocks. Centuries ago, they gave the city their name, and today Mathura is still known as the Peacock City. The peacocks seem to know that they are the chosen of Krishna. Spreading out their many-hued fantails, they glance at us drab mortals with an air of disdain. Near Mathura is Brindavan in whose forests—they have gone now—the boy Krishna and his brother Balram ran wild, playing on their shepherds’ pipes. The neighbours found Krishna very mischievous. He was extremely fond of butter and, going by stealth one day to the house of a neighbour, climbed onto a shelf to get at a

large jar of butter. He ate the butter as far as he could reach, and then got into the jar. The owner, on returning, found him there and putting a cover on the jar to prevent the boy from escaping went to Krishna’s father to make a complaint. But when he arrived at the house it was not the father who met him but the little butter-thief. There is another story which tells us of the day Krishna stole his mother ’s curds, and finished them while no one was looking. ‘O, you wicked one!’ exclaimed his mother when she discovered what had happened. ‘Come, let me see your mouth.’ And when she looked into his mouth, she saw the Universe—the earth, sea and heavens; the sun and the moon, the planets and all the stars . . . Brindavan stands on a tongue of land surrounded by the river, which has curved here in a strange fashion. Legend tells us that Balram who was very strong, once led a dance on the Yamuna’s bank, but moved his giant limbs so clumsily that the river laughed aloud and taunted him, saying: ‘Enough, my clumsy child! How can you hope to dance as Krishna, who is divine?’ Balram was very angry with the river, and taking his great plough he traced a furrow from the brink of the river; but so deep was the furrow that the river fell into it and was led far astray. When the tyrant king Kamsa heard of the unusual exploits of Krishna and Balram, he planned to have them killed in case they became a danger to his power. He sent a message to the brothers, inviting them to a contest of arms in the royal city of Mathura. Krishna and Balram accepted the challenge. On the day of the contest, King Kamsa sat on a lofty throne near the arena. As Krishna and Balram entered, a mighty elephant was sent against them. But Krishna, seizing the animal by the tail, swung it around his head and threw it to the ground. Then each of the brothers taking a tusk, they slew Kamsa’s mightiest champions. Kamsa ordered his army to kill the boys, but Krishna sprang up the steps of the throne, seized the king by his hair and hurled him into a deep ravine. Visitors to Mathura are still shown the mound where Kamsa’s throne once stood. And still venerated is that part of the river front where the two boys rested after dragging the body of Kamsa down to the funeral pyre. I wandered in the streets of the city past shops gleaming with brasswork or piled high with pedas, Mathura’s famous sweets. From the bridge, I could see the riverfront with its innumerable temples. And below, hundreds of majestic tortoises watched the bathers and the boatmen with speculative eyes. Sometimes a boatman seized one of these longnecked creatures and held it up to view. The tortoise would immediately draw its legs into its shell—a vivid illustration of the theory that nothing is annihilated but only disappears, the effect being absorbed in the cause!



Footloose In Agra The cycle-rickshaw is the best way of getting about Agra. Its smooth gliding motion and leisurely rate of progress are in keeping with the pace of life in this old-world city. The rickshaw-boy juggles his way through the crowded bazaars, exchanging insults with tonga-drivers, pedestrians and other cyclists; but once on the broad Mall or Taj Road, his curses change to carefree song and he freewheels along the tree- lined avenues. Old colonial-style bungalows still stand in large compounds shaded by peepul, banyan, neem and jamun trees. Looking up, I notice a number of bright paper kites that flutter, dip and swerve in the cloudless sky. I cannot recall seeing so many kites before. ‘Is it a festival today?’ I ask. ‘No, sahib,’ says the rickshaw-boy, ‘not even a holiday.’ ‘Then why so many kites?’ He does not even bother to look up. ‘You can see kites every day, sahib.’ ‘I don’t see them in Delhi.’ ‘Ah, but Delhi is a busy place. In Agra, people still fly kites. There are kite-flying competitions every Sunday, and heavy bets are sometimes placed on the outcome.’ As we near the city, I notice kites stuck in trees or dangling from electric wires; but there are always others soaring up to take their place. I ask the rickshaw-boy to tell me something about the kite-fliers and the kitemakers, but the subject bores him. ‘You had better see the Taj today, sahib.’ ‘All right take me to it. I can lunch afterwards.’ It is difficult to view the Taj at noon. The sun strikes the white marble, and there is a great dazzle of reflected light. I stand there with averted eyes, looking at everything—the formal gardens, the surrounding walls of red sandstone, the winding river—everything except the monument I have come to see. It is there, of course, very solid and real, perfectly preserved, with every jade, jasper or lapis lazuli playing its part in the overall design; and after a while, I can shade my eyes and take in a vision of shimmering white marble. The light rises in waves from the paving-stones, and the squares of black and white marble create an effect of running water. Inside the chamber it is cool and dark but rather musty, and I waste no time in hurrying out again into the sunlight.

I walk the length of a gallery and turn with some relief to the river scene. The sluggish Yamuna winds past Agra on its way to its union with the Ganga. I know the Yamuna well. I know it where it emerges from the foothills near Kalsi, cold and blue from the melting snows; I know it as it winds through fields of wheat and sugar cane and mustard, across the flat plains of Uttar Pradesh, sometimes placid, sometimes in flood. I know the river at Delhi, where its muddy banks are a patchwork of clothes spread out by the hundreds of washermen who serve the city and I know it at Mathura, where it is alive with huge turtles; Mathura, sacred city, whose beginnings are lost in antiquity. And then the river winds its way to Agra, to this spot by the Taj, where parrots flash in the sunshine, kingfishers swoop low over the water and a proud peacock struts across the lawns surrounding the monument. I follow the peacock into a shady grove. It is quite tame and does not fly away. It leads me to a small boy who is sitting in the shade of a tree, feasting on a handful of small green fruit. I have not seen the fruit before, and I ask the boy to tell me what it is. He offers me what looks like a hard green plum. ‘It is the fruity from the Ashoke tree,’ says the boy. ‘There are many such trees in the garden.’ ‘Are you allowed to take the fruit?’ ‘I am allowed,’ he says, grinning. ‘My father is the head gardener.’ I bite into the fruit. It is hard and sour but not unpleasant. ‘Do you live here?’ I ask. ‘Over the wall,’ he says. ‘But I come here everyday, to help my father and to eat the fruit.’ ‘So you see the Taj Mahal every day?’ ‘I have seen it every day for as long as I can remember.’ ‘And I am seeing it for the first time. . . . you’re very lucky.’ He shrugs. ‘If you see it once, or a hundred times, it is the same. It doesn’t change.’ ‘Don’t you like looking at it, then?’ ‘I like looking at the people who come here. They are always different. In the evening there will be many people.’ ‘You must have seen people from almost every country in the world.’ ‘That is so. They all come here to look at the Taj. Kings and Queens and Presidents and Prime Ministers and film stars and poor people too. And I look at

them. In that way it isn’t boring.’ ‘Well, you have the Taj to thank for that.’ He gazes thoughtfully at the shimmering monument. His eyes are accustomed to the sharp sunlight. He sees the Taj every day, but at this moment he is really looking at it, thinking about it, wondering what magic it must possess to attract people from all comers of the earth, to bring them here walking through his father ’s well-kept garden so that he can have something new and fresh to look at each day. A cloud—a very small cloud—passes across the face of the sun; and in the softened light I too am able to look at the Taj without screwing up my eyes. As the boy said, it does not change. Therein lies beauty. For the effect on the traveller is the same today as it was three hundred years ago when Bernier wrote: ‘Nothing offends the eye. . . . No part can be found that is not skilfully wrought, or that has not its peculiar beauty.’ And so, for a few moments, this poem in marble is on view to two unimportant people—the itinerant writer and the gardener ’s boy. We say nothing; there is really nothing to be said. (But now, a few months later, when I try to recapture the essence of that day, it is not the monument that I remember most vividly. The Taj is there of course; I still see it as a mirror for the sun. But what remains with me, more than anything else, is the passage of the river and the sharp flavour of the Ashoke fruit.) In the afternoon I walk through the old bazaars which lie to the west of Akbar ’s great red sandstone fort, and I am not surprised to find a small street which is almost entirely taken up by kite-shops. Most of them sell the smaller, cheaper kites, but one small dark shop has in it a variety of odd and fantastic creations. Stepping inside, I find myself face to face with the doyen of Agra’s kite-makers, Hosain Ali, a feeble old man whose long beard is dyed red with the juice of mehendi leaves. He has just finished making a new kite from bamboo, paper and thin silk, and it lies outside in the sun, firming up. It is a pale pink kite, with a small green tail. The old man is soon talking to me, for he likes to talk and is not very busy. He complains that few people buy kites these days (I find this hard to believe), and tells me that I should have visited Agra twenty-five years ago, when kite-flying was the sport of kings and even grown men found time to spend an hour or two every day with these gay, dancing strips of paper. Now, he says, everyone hurries, hurries in a heat of hope, and delicate things like kites and day-dreams are trampled underfoot. ‘Once I made a wonderful kite,’ says Hosain Ali nostalgically. ‘It was unlike any kite seen in Agra. It had a number of small, very light paper discs trailing on a thin

bamboo frame. At the end of each disc I fixed a sprig of grass, forming a balance on both sides. On the first and largest disc I painted a face and gave it eyes made of two small mirrors. The discs, which grew smaller from head to tail, gave the kite the appearance of a crawling serpent. It was very difficult to get this great kite off the ground. Only I could manage it. ‘Of course, everyone heard of the Dragon Kite I had made, and word went about that there was some magic in its making. A large crowd arrived on the maidan to watch me fly the kite. ‘At first the kite would not leave the ground. The discs made a sharp wailing sound, the sun was trapped in the little mirrors. My kite had eyes and tongue and a trailing silver tail. I felt it come alive in my hands. It rose from the ground, rose steeply into the sky, moving farther and farther away, with the sun still glinting in its dragon eyes. And when it went very high, it pulled fiercely on the twine, and my son had to help me with the reel. ‘But still the kite pulled, determined to be free—yes, it had become a living thing —and at last the twine snapped, and the wind took the kite, took it over the rooftops and the waving trees and the river and the far hills for ever. No one ever saw where it fell. Sahib, are you listening? The Dragon Kite is lost, but for you I’ll make a bright new poem to fly.’ ‘Make me one,’ I say, moved by his tale, or rather by the manner of its telling. ‘I will collect it tomorrow, before I leave Agra. Let it be a beautiful kite. I won’t fly it. I’ll hang it on my wall, and will not give it a chance to get away.’ It is evening, and the winter sun comes slanting through the intricate branches of a banyan tree, as a cycle-rickshaw—a different one this time—brings me to a forgotten corner of Agra that I have always wanted to visit. This is the old Roman Catholic cemetery where so many early European travellers and adventurers lie buried. Although it is quite probably the oldest Christian cemetery in northern India, it has none of that overgrown, crumbling look that is common to old cemeteries in monsoon lands. It is a bright, even cheerful place, and the jingle of tonga-bells and other street noises can be heard from any part of the grounds. The grass is cut, the gravestones are kept clean, and most of the inscriptions are still readable. The caretaker takes me straight to the oldest grave—this is the oldest known European grave in northern India—and it happens to be that of an Englishman, John Mildenhall. The lettering stands out clearly:

Here lies John Mildenhall, Englishman, who left London in 1599 and travelling to India through Persia, reached Agra in 1605 and spoke with the Emperor Akbar. On a second visit in 1614 he fell ill at Lahore, died at Ajmere, and was buried here through the good offices of Thomas Kerridge Merchant. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Agra cemetery was considered blessed ground by Christians, and the dead were brought here from distant places. Thomas Kerridge must have put himself to considerable expense to bury his friend in Agra. Mildenhall was a romantic, who styled himself an envoy of Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately he left no account of his travels, although a couple of his letters are quoted in the writings of Purchas, another English merchant, who lies buried in the Protestant cemetery a couple of furlongs away. Nearby is the grave of the Venetian, Jerome Veronio, who died at Lahore. According to some old records, he had a hand in designing the Taj, modelling it on Humayun’s tomb in Delhi. There had for long been a belief that this ‘architect’ of the Taj lay buried in the cemetery but no one knew where. Then in 1945, Father Hyacinth, Superior Regular of Agra, scraped the moss off a tombstone, revealing the simple epitaph: ‘Here lies Jerome Veronio, who died at Lahore.’ Actually, there is no evidence that Veronio designed the Taj, and even if he had something to do with it, he was only one of a number of artists and architects who worked on its construction. The chief architect was Muhammed Sharif of Samarkand. Each drew a salary of one thousand rupees per month. Ismail Khan of Turkey was the dome-maker. A number of inlay workers, sculptors and masons were Hindus, including Manohar Singh of Lahore and Mohan Lal of Kanauj, both famous inlay-workers. A man of more authentic accomplishments was the Italian lapidary, Horten Bronzoni, whose grave lies at a short distance from Veronio’s. He died on 11 August 1677. According to Tavernier, it was Bronzoni who cut the Koh-i-noor diamond; and, says Tavernier, he cut the stone very badly. Bronzoni is again mentioned as having manufactured a model ship of war for Aurangzeb, who had been annoyed by the depredations of Portuguese pirates and was anxious to create a navy. The ship was floated in a huge tank and manoeuvred by a number of European artillery-men. It made a ridiculous sight and convinced the Emperor that a navy was out of the question. There are over eighty old Armenian graves in the cemetery, but the only one that interests me is the tomb of Shah Azar Khan, an expert in the art of moulding a heavy cannon. One of these, ‘Zamzamah’, earned a measure of immortality in Kipling’s Kim, who hold Zam-Zammah, that ‘fire-breathing dragon’, hold the Punjab; for the

great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror ’s loot. The gun was 14.6 feet long, and is still at Lahore. Other historic tombs lie scattered about the cemetery, but the most striking and curious of them is the grave of Colonel Jon Hessing, who died in 1803. It is a miniature Taj Mahal, built of red sandstone. Although small compared to a Mughal tomb, it is large for a Christian grave, and could easily accommodate a living family of moderate proportions. Hessing came to India from Holland, and was one of a colourful band of freelance soldiers (most of them deserters) who served in Sindhia’s Maratha army. Hessing, we are told, was a good, benevolent man and a great soldier. The tomb was built by his wife Alice, who it must be supposed, felt as tenderly towards the Colonel as Shah Jahan felt towards his queen. She could not afford marble. Even so, her ‘Taj’ cost a lakh of rupees. Outside, in the street, people move about with casual unconcern. Street-vendors occupy the pavement, unwilling that their rivals should take advantage of a brief absence. In the banyan tree, the sparrows and bulbuls are settling down for the night. A kite lies entangled in the upper branches.



Street Of The Red Well The sun beats down on the sweltering city of Old Delhi. Not a breath of air stirs in the narrow, winding streets. This old walled city, now over three hundred years old, has no open spaces, no fountains, no sidewalks, no shady avenues. During the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan, a canal ran down the centre of the main thoroughfare, Chandni Chowk (Street of the Silversmiths); but the canal has long since been covered over, and the Jamuna river, from which the water was channelled, lies beyond the Emperor ’s fort, the Red Fort of Delhi, where the Prime Minister speaks to the multitude every year on Independence Day. It is not water that I seek most, but shelter from the heat and glare of the overhead sun. I have chosen what is quite possibly the hottest day in May, the temperature over 105° Fahrenheit, to go walking in search of—what? A story, perhaps an adventure. Or that is what I set out to do. The heat of the day has willed otherwise. I may be ready for an adventure, but no one else is interested. I am the only one walking the streets from choice. Shopkeepers nod drowsily beneath whirring ceiling-fans. The pavement barber has taken his customer into the shelter of an awning. A fortune-teller has decided that there is nothing to predict and has fallen asleep under the same awning. A vegetable-seller sprinkles water on his vegetables in a dispirited fashion. Those cauliflowers were fresh an hour ago, they look old already. Even the flies are drowsy. Instead of buzzing feverishly from place to place, they stagger about on tired legs. It is the pigeons who have found all the coolest places. These birds have made the old city their own. New Delhi is for the crows who like to have a tree to sleep in, even if they take their meals from out of kitchens and verandas. But the pigeons prefer buildings, and the older the buildings the better. They are familiar with every cool alcove or shady recess in the crumbling walls of neglected mosques and mansions. A fat, supercilious pigeon watches me from the window ledge above a jeweller ’s shop. The pigeon’s forebears settled here long before the British thought of taking Delhi. Conquerors have come and gone. Nadir Shah the Persian, Madhav Rao the Maratha, Ghulam Kadir the Rohilla, and generations of goldsmiths and silversmiths.

Hindus and Muslims have made and lost fortunes in the city, but nothing has disturbed the tranquil life of these pigeons. Their gentle cooing can always be heard when there is a lull in the jagged symphony of traffic noise. How do they manage to sound so cool? But here’s welcome relief for humans; a shady corner in Lal Kuan Bazaar (Street of the Red Well), where an old man provides drinking water to thirsty wayfarers such as myself. His water is stored in a surahi, an earthenware jug which keeps the water sweet and cool. I bend down, cup my hands, and receive the sparkling liquid as my benefactor tilts the surahi towards me. Lal Kuan. The Red Well. Of course it is no longer here. But the street still bears its name. And I like to think that here, in the middle of the street, where a bullock has gone to sleep forcing the cyclists to make a detour, there was once a well made of dark red brick, where the water bubbled forth all day. Imprisoned beneath the soil, held down by the crowded commercial houses of this old quarter, the water must still be there; it gives nourishment to an old peepul tree that grows beside a temple. It is the only tree in the street. It juts out from the temple wall growing straight and tall, dwarfing the two-storey houses. One of its roots, breaking through the ground, has curled up to provide a smooth, well-worn seat. And it is cool here, beneath the peepul. Even when there is no breeze, the slender heart-shaped leaves revolve prettily, creating their own currents of air. No wonder the sages of old found it a good tree to sit beneath. No wonder they called it sacred. On the other side of the road, a tall iron doorway is set in a high wall. Doors like this were only built in the previous century, when a wealthy merchant’s house had to be a miniature fortress as well as a residence. I cannot see over the wall and I would like to know what lies behind the door. Perhaps a side-street, perhaps a market, perhaps a garden, perhaps. The door opens, not easily, because it has been left closed for a long time, but slowly and with much complaint. And beyond the door there is only an empty courtyard, covered with nibble, the ruins of an old house. I am about to turn away when I hear a deep tremendous murmur. It is the cooing of many pigeons. But where are they? I advance further into the ruin, and there, opening out in front of me, ready to receive me as the rabbit hole was ready to receive Alice, is an old, disused well.

I peer down into its murky depths. It is dark, very dark, down there; but that is where the pigeons live, in the walls of this lost, long-forgotten well shut away from the rest of the city. I cannot see any water. So I drop a pebble over the side. It strikes the wall, and then, with a soft plop, touches water. At that instant there is a rush of air and a tremendous beating of wings, and a flock of pigeons, thirty or forty of them, fly out of the well, streak upwards, circle the building, and then falling into formation, wheel overhead, the sun gleaming white on their underwings. I have discovered their secret. Now I know why they always look so cool, so refreshed, while we who walk the streets of Old Delhi do so with parched mouths and drooping limbs. The pigeons are the only ones who still know about the Red Well.



SONGS AND LOVE POEMS



Lost* I boarded the big ship bound for the West, The clean white liner. In the noon-day heat Coolies thronged the sun-drenched pier. Yet I saw only The village I had left, And a boat at rest On the river’s shallow water In the shade of the flowering Long red-fingered poinsettia. I saw not the big waves But the ripple of running Water in the reeds. We came to London, l ost in N ovember mist: In an ash-grey dawn at Tilbury dock I longed for the warmth of a kiss Of sunlight. In the busy streets Were cavalcades of people Hurrying in a heat of hope. But I saw only The wheat-field, the tea-slope . . . A cow at rest. And longed for the soft, shoeless tread Of a village boy . . .



Love Lyrics For Binya Devi 1 Your face streamed April rain, As you climbed the steep hill, Calling the white cow home. You seemed very tiny On the windswept mountainside; A twist of hair lay Strung across your forehead And your torn blue skirt Clung to your tender thighs. You smiled through the blind white rain And gave me the salt kiss of your lips, Salt mingled with raindrop and mint, And left me there, where I had come to fetch you— So gallant in the blistering rain! And you ran home laughing; But it was worth the drenching. 2 Your feet, laved with dew, Stood firm on the quickening grass. There was a butterfly between us: Red and gold its wings And heavy with dew. It could not move because of the weight of moisture. And as your foot came nearer And I saw that you would crush it, I said: ‘Stay. It has only a few days In the sun, and we have many.’ ‘And if I spare it,’ you said, laughing, ‘ What wil l you do for me, what wil l you pay? ’ ‘Why, anything you say.’ ‘ And wil l you kiss my foot? ’ ‘Both feet,’ I said; and did so happily. For they were no less than the wings of butterflies. 3

All night our love 4 Stole sleep from dusty eyes. 5 What dreams were lost, I’ll never know. 6 It seemed the world’s last night had come And there would never be a dawn. Your touch soon swept the panting dark away— Some suns are brighter by night than day! Your eyes, glad and wondering, Dwelt in mine, And all that stood between us Was a blade of grass Shivering slightly In the breath from our lips. But grass will bend. We turn and kiss, And the world swings round, The sky spins, the trees go hush Hush, the mountain sings— Though we must leave this place, We’ve trapped forever In the trembling air The last sweet phantom kiss. I know you’ll come when the cherries Are ripe; But it is stil l N ovember And I must wait For the green fruit to blush At your approach. And meanwhile the tree is visited By robber bands, masked mynas And yellow birds with beaks like daggers, Determined not to leave one cherry Whole for lovers. But still I wait, hoping one day You’ll come to stain your lips With cherry-juice, and climb my tree; Bright goddess in dark green temple, Thrusting your tongue at me.

Slender waisted, bright as a song, Dark as the whistling-thrush at dawn, Swift as the running days of N ovember, Lost like a dream too sweet to remember.



It Isn’t Time That’s Passing Remember the long ago when we lay together In a pain of tenderness and counted Our dreams: long summer afternoons When the whistling-thrush released A deep sweet secret on the trembling air; Blackbird on the wing, bird of the forest shadows, Black rose in the long ago summer, This was your song: It isn’t time that’s passing by, It is you and I.



Kites Are you listening to me, boy? I am only your kitemaker, My poems are flimsy things Torn by the wind, caught in mango trees, Gay sport for boys and dreamers. My silent songs. But once I fashioned A kite like a violin, She sang most mournfully, like the wind In tall deodars. Are you l istening? Remember The Dragon Kite I made one summer? N o, you are too young. A great Kite, with small mirrors to catch the sun And eyes and a tongue, and gold Trappings and a trailing silver tail. A kite for the gods to ride! And it rose most sweetly, but the wind Came up from nowhere, A wind in waiting for us, My twine snapped and the wind took the kite, Took it over the flat roofs And the waving trees and the river And the blue hills for ever. N o one knew where it fel l . Boy, are you Listening? Al l my kites Are torn, but for you I’ll make a bright N ew poem to fl y.



Cherry Tree Eight years have passed Since I placed my cherry seed in the grass. ‘Must have a tree of my own,’ I said— And watered it once and went to bed And forgot; but cherries have a way of growing Though no one’s caring very much or knowing, And suddenly that summer, near the end of May, I found a tree had come to stay. It was very small, a five months’ child, Lost in the tall grass running wild. Goats ate the leaves, grasscutter’s scythe Split it apart, and a monsoon blight Shrivelled the slender stem . . . Even so, N ext spring I watched three new shoots grow, The young tree struggle, upwards thrust Its arms in a fresh fierce lust For light and air and sun. I could only wait, as one Who watches, wondering, while Time and the rain Made a miracle from green growing pain . . . I went away next year— Spent a season in Kashmir— Came back thinner, rather poor, But richer by a cherry tree at my door. Six feet high, my own dark cherry, And—I could scarcely believe it—a berry, Ripened and jewelled in the sun, Hung from a branch—just one! And next year there were blossoms, small Pink, fragile, quick to fall At the merest breath, the sleepiest breeze . . . I lay on the grass, at ease, Looked up through leaves, at the blue Blind sky, at the finches as they flew And flitted through the dappled green, While bees in an ecstasy drank Of nectar from each bloom, and the sun sank Swiftly, and the stars turned in the sky, And moon-moths and singing crickets and I— Yes, I!—praised night and stars and trees: A small, tall cherry grown by me.



Lovers Observed Lovers lie drowsy in the grass, Sunk in bracken, swimming in pools Of late afternoon sunshine; All agitation past, they stay totally Absorbed in grass. Green grass, and growing from that place A sweep of languid arm still bare But for a lost ladybird. Anonymous lover brushes a dragon Fly from his face. Brief thunder blossoms in the air, A leaf between the thighs is caught And crushed. Love comes like a thief, Crouching among the bruised and broken clover. All flesh in grass.



Lone Fox Dancing As I walked home last night I saw a lone fox dancing In the cold moonlight. I stood and watched. Then Took the low road, knowing The night was his by right. Sometimes, when words ring true, I’m like a lone fox dancing In the morning dew.



Secondhand Shop In Hill Station The smell of secondhand goods Is everywhere. Lost causes, Lonely lives, and deaths in small cottages Among the pines, meet here in the mildewed dark Of his shop—Abdul Salaam, Proprietor. Tales of a hundred failures And ten hundred broken dreams. A hat-pin and an Iron Cross Lie down with a blackened pistol, While a bronze Buddha smiles across At a plastic doll from Bristol. Ol d cl othes, ol d books (perhaps a first edition? ), A dressing-gown, a dagger marked with rust. A card for some lost Christmas, And inside, a letter: ‘Dear Jane, I am getting better.’ A Chinese vase and a china-dog. The shop is cold and thick with dust, The Mall is far from Grand; But Abdul Salaam grows prosperous, In a suit that’s secondhand.



A Frog Screams Standing near a mountain stream I heard a sound like the creaking Of a branch in the wind. It was a frog screaming In the jaws of a long green snake. I couldn’t bear that hideous cry. And taking two sharp sticks, I made the twisting snake disgorge the frog, Who hopped quite spry out of the snake’s mouth And sailed away on a floating log. Pleased with the outcome, I released the green grass-snake, Stood back and spoke aloud: ‘ Is this what it feel s l ike to be God? ’ ‘Only what it’s like to be English,’ Said God (speaking for a change in French); ‘I would have let the snake finish his lunch!’